


tether

by jdphoenix



Series: the event [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23569000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma escapes her captors just in time for the world to end.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Series: the event [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797304
Comments: 7
Kudos: 87





	tether

**Author's Note:**

> I chose not to use warnings, not because any apply and are spoilery, but because there is no set archive warning for what happens but it feels bad enough to deserve a warning. To that end, I've put the (spoilery) warning in the end notes. It should be said, whether you read the warning or not that there _is_ an archive warning I could have used for the worst possible outcome of that situation. So, like, remember that before you yell at me.

There’s a building ring in Jemma’s ears and a pressure in her skull that together remind her all too much of those last horrible moments before the Chitauri virus reached its culmination. She didn’t know if she’d live past it and her worst nightmares still end with that sound and a hypnic jerk like her body is trying to reenact the fall.

This isn’t the end of a nightmare though, it’s the start of one.

She’s blind. Bright light flooding her eyes and making it impossible to see. She’s also in pain. Though hands tried to grasp her when the jerk displaced her, she landed on her shoulder on hard tile.

“What the _fuck_?”

“What are you idiots doing up there?!”

Jemma’s vision is starting to clear. She’s under a plastic tarp with heavily booted feet all around. Immediately in front of her nose, a hand truck, one of several lined up ahead of her, plops down. Its burden is covered in a tarp similar to the one covering Jemma and she sees immediately that it too is a person.

“She moved!”

It’s Coulson. Not the man yelling over her head, the one on the hand truck. She wouldn’t have known him at any other time but these are the same shoes he was wearing when the Ghost Rider took over his body and there’s soot deep in the grooves of the seams. Given the number of hand trucks she saw in her brief glimpse, it’s not hard to imagine these men have taken the rest of the team captive as well.

“What are you talking about? They can’t _move_. The inhibitor’s still running.”

Jemma’s brain gets to work bringing up schematics and weaknesses of every device she’s ever heard of that can inhibit an individual’s motor and mental functions to the degree they can be carted around like luggage and wake up relatively unharmed.

While her brain is busy with that, she has little room to consider her options. So she follows through on instinct and the lesson May drilled into her before she left for Hydra: she runs.

“Well, she di- Hey? Hey!”

More yells join the first. A gunshot echoes down the hall after her.

“ **Stop!** ” a voice bellows above the rest. “They are to be _unharmed_!”

That’s something, Jemma thinks as she rounds the first corner she comes to. More chance she’ll survive to rescue the others. More chance the others will survive to be rescued.

“You two! Find her. Bring her. The rest of you, take the others as planned. We don’t have much time.”

Jemma would curse if she had the breath for it. If they don’t have much time, then she doesn’t either. So much for her chances of rescuing the others. 

It would help, of course, if she had any idea what she’s rescuing them _from_ or who these people are.

Perhaps they’re in league with Ivanov? But why would he want them unharmed? Alive, she could understand, given his entire purpose for more than a decade has been to hunt Coulson down and see him and everyone he cares for tortured to slow, agonizing deaths.

Her feet slip out from under her as she rounds a corner and she has to catch herself against the wall. “Best not to think about torture right now,” she tells herself and dashes onward.

It’s also not Ivanov’s style to capture them so gently. That was more Radcliffe and AIDA’s M.O.

In fact, it makes little sense to do it that way _at all_. The team were eating in a public place when one of their number was wanted for the attempted murder of a high ranking U.S. military official. None of them were armed and any decently outfitted team would have had the equipment necessary to discern that before even setting foot in the diner. They very clearly _expected_ capture and were willing to go along with it.

Which all implies that this attack wasn’t one of opportunity, it was one long in the making. Whoever is behind this, they’ve been planning it for a while.

The cramping in Jemma’s gut has less to do with her lack of stretching before this run and more to do with the certainty she knows exactly who orchestrated this.

She rounds another corner—more carefully this time as she can hear her pursuers panting behind her now—and skids to a halt. It isn’t the dead end that stops her in her tracks, it’s the familiar eagle logo painted on the metal wall. It’s just like him to use a defunct SHIELD base for his operations. And it explains why he would need them unaware during transport or one of them might recognize the layout and gain an advantage.

Before she can recover and think to go for one of the doors, a body slams into her back.

“Got you!”

She twists and bends, stomps and kicks, fighting against the strong arms around her in every way May taught her. She gets lucky and his left arm loosens just as his partner comes in behind him.

“You got- What the _fuck_?”

The man holding Jemma grips her right arm tightly. She yanks away and sprawls on the floor, narrowly catching herself before repeating her earlier shoulder injury.

“What the fuck. What the fuck. What the _fuck_ , man!”

The strain in the second man’s voice has Jemma looking back and she instantly sees what would have a man who, apparently, has no issue kidnapping multiple individuals and wheeling them into dark, secret bases cursing in fear.

The truth is Jemma didn’t manage to free herself from the first man; the sudden disintegration of his left arm did that and it appears the rest of him is following suit. He doesn’t scream or cry out. If anything he seems only mildly confused as his left hand disappears before his very eyes. And then his eyes follow, along with the rest of him until only dust remains to drift lazily in the air.

“What the fuck,” the second man breathes.

“Quite,” Jemma can’t help saying.

It’s a mistake. The man’s attention instantly snaps to her and he pulls his sidearm.

“What did you do?” he demands.

Jemma raises her arms in the universal signal for _please don’t shoot me_. “I didn’t. I-”

“You did. You’re one of those Inhumans, aren’t you? That’s how you woke up and you- you- you did- _that_!”

“I’m not,” she says, attempting to be calm. “I _didn’t_.”

“You killed Garcia.”

“No, I-”

The man’s finger leaves the side of his pistol to wrap around the trigger and Jemma sees there’s no reasoning her way out of this. She dives to the left and, thankfully, the door there opens under her hand. She scurries through it on all fours, slams it shut, and locks it, all before the sound of the first gunshot has faded.

There are more, naturally, but Jemma hardly waits around to count them. She runs headlong down the stairwell.

/////

_ten days later..._

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jemma says as she pours maple syrup on her pancakes. “I have had a traumatic time, I deserve some sweetness.”

An angry pout answers her.

“Not that you aren’t plenty sweet, of course,” she soothes.

“I can give you some sweetness,” says a man at the booth nearest her. He wipes his fingers over his mustache, cleaning away the crumbs from the towering stack of waffles he just tore through. She might consider his smile kind, were it not for the circumstances.

Jemma doesn’t see many smiles these days. People just aren’t feeling up to it when half the population—not of a single city or country, but of the _world—_ has been wiped out. Just like that. No warning. No saving grace. No reason either.

Oh, she’s heard the same rumors everyone has—aliens over New York and Wakanda, Avenger sightings in multiple locations around the globe—so it’s logical to assume the cause lies there. But there was no _reason_ to the deaths. Young or old, rich or poor, healthy or infirm. There was no link between those taken. At least none that’s immediately obvious.

Jemma would likely be seeking one out, burying her grief in the search for answers where none might exist as she so often did before, if it weren’t for her responsibilities.

But thoughts about what might have been will hardly do her any good now and her pancakes are getting cold.

She hefts the tiny jar of maple syrup like she’s toasting the man. “I think I have enough here, thank you.”

Though she faces pointedly forward, giving him her shoulder and very clearly indicating her desire to end the conversation there, she can see the man sliding out of his booth as she carefully bisects her pancakes. She hopes, when she sees the money he’s left on the table, that he’s merely standing to leave. But that hope is squashed, as so many have been recently, when his shadow falls over her table.

Before the Event, Jemma might have yelled. She might have found help and support from any number of truckers and waitresses and maybe even the cook in the back with his great butcher’s knife. But now?

The restaurant is practically deserted. The staff, all two of them, are dead on their feet, working because the truckers need to or an even greater disaster will descend. That’s hardly the irate mob she would like. And besides, everyone is so caught up in their own grief and pain, there’s no telling if any of them will be able to summon the strength to care.

Besides, Jemma is—or was—a SHIELD agent. She can handle this.

She subtly shifts her grip on her fork. The knife she can easily jam into his leg as she holds it now, but the fork will also make a fine weapon, perfect for stabbing through an eye.

“Come on, beautiful, don’t be like that.” His hand is heavy on her shoulder. “Let’s not make this difficult, huh?”

She turns her head slightly to the left, where her companion sits and watches everything with rapt attention. What will she think if Jemma stabs this man’s eye out? But what will happen to her if Jemma doesn’t?

He slides his hand over her shoulder and down her spine, forcing her to sit up so that he can reach down towards the hem of her shirt. Jemma uses the excuse to hide the shift in her posture necessary to angle the fork properly.

And promptly has her hand slammed down on the table with such force the fork clatters against the jumping plates. A hand brushes her assailant’s away, wrapping around her shoulder and pulling her briefly close so lips can touch her hair in the appearance of a kiss.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, sweetheart. Things are crazy out there.”

/////

Grant can feel Simmons struggling with whether to follow through on stabbing the douche with the mustache or stab him instead. He maintains eye contact with the douche while straightening. He _also_ keeps a hand on Simmons’ arm, letting his fingers slide up it in a familiar, devoted husband sort of way and then linger on her shoulder. That it will drive both her and the douche crazy is only a side benefit to the heads up it’ll give him if she decides to attack.

“I get these are trying times,” he says in a conversational tone that borders on threatening, “people looking to connect, trying to find something to cling to. But this is my girl. My cling-ee. You understand.”

The douche’s eyes take in Grant. From the scar at his hairline all the way to the gun he doesn’t bother to hide on his waist.

“Right. I was just making conversation. You all have a nice day. Stay safe out there.”

“You too,” Grant says with a smile that is 100% threat. He slowly circles the table to watch the douche head out before plopping into the seat across from Simmons. “Well. Fancy seeing you at the end of the world.”

He reaches for one of the pieces of bacon on her plate—he hasn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday—and has to detour at the last second to slam her _other_ hand onto the table before she can stab him with the knife. She’s lucky too, that cheap blade bends under the force and could’ve gone into her hand.

“Jemma,” he says, all false horror, “think of the _baby_.”

Her wide eyes cut to the kid. She—Grant’s guessing it’s a girl, based solely on the sparkly pink “nobody puts baby in a corner” printed on her top—looks between the two of them before slamming her plastic play fork onto her highchair tray with a proud smile. Grant smiles back.

“Where’d you get a baby anyway?”

“None of your business.”

If Grant hoped diverting attention to the kid would soften Simmons up, he’s disappointed. She’s still wide-eyed and pale and, even after she pulls her hand out of his grip to nurse her wrist, he can see she’s shaking.

“Simmons,” he says, softening his voice. He waits until her squirrelly eyes find his. “I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? I meant what I said to that prick. I just wanna reconnect. Tell me what happened.”

 _Tell me who else made it_. That’s what he really means, but he can’t bring himself to say it.

For about half a second he thinks Simmons is about to break down crying right there in front of him and he has a momentary worry it’ll draw undue attention their way. But it’s pointless. Both because crying in public is the new societal norm—not a single day’s passed since the Event that Grant hasn’t seen at least one person sobbing—and because Simmons isn’t sad. She’s _pissed_.

“You _know_ what happened,” she snaps. She keeps her voice low at least. It’s gotta be habit to keep SHIELD business away from civilian ears because she’s certainly not hiding her anger from the kid. “You sent your people to capture us, to- to do _something_ to us so we’d be sure to be taken because you were too much of a coward to kill us yourself!”

She’d probably keep going, but the kid lets out a wail of protest. She doesn’t like Simmons’ attitude anymore than Grant does. Simmons turns to her, enticing her with the bulky plastic cutlery and speaking soothing words to her.

“There now, dove. They say children can sense when someone is a bad person so I understand why you’re distressed being so near Ward, but he’ll be gone soon enough, I promise.”

Her passive aggression rolls off his back. Let her say what she wants, so long as she’s calming herself down along with helping the kid relax. He’s content to wait and takes the opportunity to finally snag that slice of bacon.

When it proves to be good as it looked, he flags down the waitress.

“Can I get a plate of what she’s having?” he asks.

“Sure, honey.” The middle-aged woman has dark circles under her eyes but still manages to smile at them. He can guess why. Ten minutes ago Simmons looked like a struggling single mother, probably lost her husband in the Event. Now they look like a happy family, just the thing to brighten someone’s spirits when the whole world’s going to hell. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks Simmons.

Simmons stops glaring daggers at Grant long enough to return the woman’s smile. “Yes, can I get a bottle of water? It’s getting to be time to feed her.”

“You want me to fix it up for you? I have-” She stops herself and closes her eyes for a count of three. “I _had_ three of my own. I know how hard it can be to take care of yourself.” There are tears in her eyes and a sob in her voice, but she manages to keep on smiling.

“Oh no, that’s-”

“My pleasure. We’re slow now and I- I gotta keep working, you know?”

Simmons can’t fight the pleading in the woman’s voice and gestures to the diaper bag sitting on the table’s only remaining seat.

“Back in a jiff.”

When she’s gone, Grant leans forward. “Simmons.”

She rolls her eyes and sits back in her seat, arms crossed petulantly over her chest. Her very familiar, unchanged chest.

When Grant was at Academy, one of his fellow cadets—Caldwell, was her name—was everyone’s favorite fantasy. Curves in all the right places and a chest that didn’t seem to lose an ounce of weight while the rest of them were sloffing off pounds eating those tiny ration packets. Hell, every day they only seemed to look better. Everyone knew come year two she’d be on the honeypot track.

Well, one day Caldwell up and collapses on mile three of their morning run. Abdominal pain. Everyone’s in basic first aid. Everyone’s got an opinion. They all stand around debating it while they wait for their C.O. to get there with medical. By they time they roll up, it’s so obvious what’s really happening Agent Kirk doesn’t even have the breath to bellow what the fuck they think they’re doing. ‘Cause Caldwell had a fucking baby. Right there on mile three outside the Academy.

So the one thing Grant knows about pregnancy is a woman’s breasts should get bigger. And Simmons’? Hers look exactly the same.

Which isn’t to say they’re _bad_. Grant’s never been too particular in that regard. Any size is good with him. But that is not the chest of a woman who recently had a baby, is his point.

He’s got other problems to tackle before they get there though, so he sets those thoughts aside and says, “I haven’t moved against SHIELD since Hive.”

She flinches at the name, like she thinks just saying it will make him appear like goddamn Candyman.

But the mention does remind her that last time they met, he was working _with_ SHIELD. Helped to save the world, in fact.

He’s not so sure that was the right move these days.

“No,” she says, but she’s not convinced. “It had to be you. Who else would use an old SHIELD base-”

“Lots of those available these days,” he points out. “You won’t believe how many wannabe Hydras are snatching them up.”

A plastic spoon ricochets off the middle of the table, narrowly missing Simmons’ plate. Grant catches it on the rebound on pure instinct.

The kid’s pouting, angry no one’s paying attention to her.

“Nice arm,” he says. He airplanes the spoon back to her. Her eyes follow it and light up when he banks up at the last second. A loop-de-loop, a couple divebombs, and she’s giggling and clapping like she’s watching the Blue Angels.

He gives her back the spoon and she swings it around, trying to mimic his actions. He pretends to be killed in the onslaught and she laughs harder.

Simmons is watching it all and looking like exhaustion personified. The fire’s gone out of her and all that’s left is the weight of the last ten days.

The waitress comes back with his food and the kid’s. The second she sees her full bottle, the baby starts squealing and reaching. Her little legs bang into the underside of her tray.

“All right, dove,” Simmons says. She scoots her chair closer so that she can hold the bottle for her.

“Here.” Grant mirrors her and takes the bottle. Or tries. Simmons isn’t giving it up so easy.

“You’re not her father,” she says. Like that matters.

“You’re not her mother.” He scoots a little closer, getting into a more comfortable position before nodding over his elevated arm to his plate. “Take my bacon while it’s warm. I stole yours, it’s only fair.”

Simmons hesitates but the lure of food is too much to resist.

“Where’d she come from?” Grant asks once she’s settled into eating.

Simmons ruminates over a bite of bacon. “The base, it was under Lake Ontario. When I got to the surface, I was in a small town on the shore and it was…” She shakes her head.

“The end of the world.” There’s plenty of places that wouldn’t have been too bad. But all of those are far from civilization—and off of any airplane flight paths. Grant was in Atlanta when it happened. He’s been in war zones less chaotic.

She nods. “I still didn’t understand the scale of it. I thought- There was a room with a machine. The others… He said they were gone. I _thought_ it was the machine, that it had malfunctioned and its effects had spread through the base.” She shakes on an exhale. “I saw the crashed cars. One without a driver. I still didn’t- I’m supposed to be a bloody _genius_ and I didn’t get it.”

Grant sets the bottle down—the kid keeps stopping anyway, turning up her nose at perfectly good food—and takes Simmons’ hand, stopping her before she can spear her cold pancakes.

“You couldn’t have known. No one could. What happened, it wasn’t like anything even SHIELD had seen before. You did good though, right? I’m guessing this story is heading toward you helping the car crash victims?”

“No.”

Grant’s gotta admit, he’s nonplussed at that. Moral, caring Jemma Simmons not helping people in need?

“I didn’t do good. When I escaped our captors, I ran the wrong way. I hadn’t realized the base was underground—I should have realized—and I shouldn’t have been running anyway, they _needed_ me and-”

Grant squeezes her hand. “The car crash?”

She bobs her head, grateful for the subject shift. “The other driver was barely hanging on. I tried to tell her to stay awake, the paramedics were sure to be there soon.” She smiles bitterly at him. “I really thought they would be. But it had to have been an hour since the Event and she knew. She kept demanding I promise to ‘take care of her.’ When I finally did, she thanked me and … those were the last words she ever said. I didn’t realize what I’d promised until I heard this one crying for atten-” Simmons’ pained expression shifts to panic in a heartbeat. “Dove? Sweetheart? What’s wrong, precious? _What did you do?_ ”

That last is directed at Grant and he can’t even be offended by the implication because the kid is _blue_.

/////

Jemma can’t think. Thirty years and she’s never been unable to think, even when her brain was quite literally baking itself alive due to an alien virus. She keeps reaching for the baby—should she move her? if she sat up straight would it be better? should she leave her?—but indecision has her pulling back at every attempt.

“Did she eat something?” She searches the tray, cataloging toys and wondering if one is missing or has broken. “Maybe she’s choking.”

“No.”

Ward’s statement is so final, it snaps Jemma right out of her frantic desperation. Immediately she knows she can’t be choking as Jemma herself inspected every single toy to be sure it wasn’t a possibility—not unless some rather sharp teeth have come in all of a sudden. She also knows Ward didn’t do this. If he wanted to use the child to hurt her, he wouldn’t kill her ten minutes after meeting her. It’s a complete waste of an advantage.

She looks to Ward, hoping his certainty is accompanied by answers as to what’s wrong, and finds him staring out the diner’s large windows. The man who tried to assault her is still out there. In the half second it takes for the diner’s cook to haul his limp body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, she sees his face is a grey-blue.

She can’t help recoiling when Ward passes her. There’s a certain aura of danger he exudes even on a good day but this? This is like nothing so much as the berserker staff’s fury.

The waitress tries to flee, but Ward vaults right over the counter and pins her to it.

“What did you do? What did you give them?”

The waitress’ face is purple and squished from the way Ward’s pressing her head into the linoleum. Jemma can’t find any pity in herself.

“It’s for the best,” the woman wails. Her eyes are fixed on Jemma, as if she would ever understand. “Don’t you see? This is only the beginning. It’ll only get worse from here. Better to let them die peacefully-”

Ward lifts the woman up just far enough to slam her back down again. “ **What did you give them?** ” he bellows.

Jemma doesn’t wait for the answer. She heads into the back and there finds an old, grimy drum that doesn’t belong in any sort of kitchen. Or anywhere for that matter.

“It’s aldrin,” she says, racing back out. “It’s a pesticide.” She grabs up the baby and though the shaking in the tiny body redoubles her already racing heart rate, she can only be glad it means she’s still alive.

“What the fuck is going on-”

“Herb! Run!” the waitress screams.

Ward hauls her up again, this time to swing her around as a human shield. Jemma ducks when she sees the gun come out but doesn’t stop. There’s a single shot fired before she makes it out the door.

“It’s all right,” she says to the child in her arms while she sprints across the parking lot. The parking lot with far too many cars, even considering half the patrons would have gone missing a week ago. “You’re going to be all right. There’s a hospital only a few miles back and not much traffic on the roads these days. We’ll be just fine, I know we will.”

She has to be. Jemma promised. She couldn’t save her team or the world or anyone else but she can save this one child. She _has_ to. If she doesn’t-

 _No_.

Jemma is not thinking of doesn’t’s or can’t’s or ifs. She’s thinking about the next step in front of her and that’s to get this _bloody carseat clipped_. But it’s difficult with a baby who’s all limp limbs and suffering what Jemma strongly suggests is a seizure. Tears are beginning to blur her vision and that’s unacceptable. If she cries now she won’t be able to see to drive.

A body shoves hers aside. Not cruelly, but simply with as much force as is necessary to move her away so that Ward can reach past her and take the child out of her seat.

“Come on. We’ll take my car.”

“But we need a car seat. It’s not safe-”

“You’ll hold her. That’ll be plenty safe.”

She has to run to keep up with him. His car is a small, sporty thing with barely enough room for the three of them. But it’s fast. Almost as soon as Ward turns the key, they’re peeling out of the parking lot.

Jemma looks back at the last second. For pursuers? For a last glimpse of the car she’s driven since New York? She sees neither, only the cloud of smoke rising up from the diner.

/////

It’s a lot like waiting for word on Skye way back when. Grant spends as much time as he can on the forms the hospital gives them. Luckily Simmons’ overall demeanor of terrified mom hid their complete lack of knowledge about basics like the kid’s medical history or age or _name—_ no, he hasn’t missed that Simmons keeps referring to her by pet names—but they’ll need to fill in the blanks eventually and it’ll help to have it all written down.

And that’s a funny thing. Them. He keeps thinking of him and Simmons as in this together. Hell, even the baby’s in it too. The easiest thing would be to walk away now, let the professionals do their job and let the kid disappear into the system like a million other kids are right now.

_Looking to connect. Something to cling to._

That’s what he said just this morning. Turns out he meant it. Who knew.

“What was that about?” he asks after the forms stop distracting him.

He’s sorry the second he says it. Simmons has been curled up in her chair for the past hour, staring at nothing, but at the question she snaps up, looking to the doors like she’s hoping for a miracle to walk in.

“What? Did you hear something?”

“You and the nurse,” he says gently. “Talking about the poison.” The nurse didn’t seem to believe it at first and even the doctor came in a few minutes later to confirm.

“Oh. It was aldrin. A pesticide.”

Grant’s gut clenches. He was hoping it was something _not_ specifically made to kill things.

“It’s been outlawed for decades. If we’re lucky-” She breathes deep. “If we’re lucky then it will have lost its potency. And they couldn’t have used as much of it as in the pancakes, not without throwing off the color of the formula. So maybe…”

Grant doesn’t have any empty reassurances for her. But he has a hand. He reaches out and she takes it in both of hers. Her head drops to his shoulder but he knows it’s less about support than hiding. She’s crying, her tears falling on his sleeve same as hers, but she’s trying to hide it and he lets her.

Sometime in her shaking, the hand not laced with his starts exploring. Tracing scars from broken knuckles. Turning his arm over so she can look at the scar on his wrist. She doesn’t comment on that time—on who he was then or the work she put in saving him—only draws her fingers lightly over the rough line.

“They’re gone, aren’t they?” he asks.

She nods into his shoulder. “He knew what was coming. I don’t know how. Maybe he did it, maybe he’s why everyone-”

“It was the Avengers,” Grant cuts in. “Whatever they were dealing with, that’s what did it.”

She doesn’t argue but that doesn’t mean she’s convinced she couldn’t have stopped this.

He squeezes her hand. “Tell me what happened.”

It’s mostly to keep her from thinking about the kid. He’s a little worried it might set her off again when it turns out her story starts in a diner, but she passes by it pretty fast and ends with her encounter with the big bad who had the whole team captured.

“I found the hand trucks, all lined up outside a room with a nice, big observation window. Something about the shape of it, it had to be purposeful. Maybe to concentrate whatever-” she waves her hand- “signal or beam or radiation or-”

“Or whatever,” he says.

She hates to be so imprecise but as she clearly has no better answer, she allows it. “-or whatever caused all this. And no team inside. He was surprised to see me, to say the least. Said quite a few cryptic things about how I wasn’t supposed to be alive, that I should’ve been with the others when they-”

“How’d you get away?” he asks, wondering if he should’ve brought an extra weapon or two from the car in case this guy’s gonna use the opportunity to pin her down.

For the first time, he gets to see a real smile on her face. He realizes he missed it.

“The base was abandoned, but not picked clean. I’d been able to gather some supplies. I threw a grenade at him before he thought to finish me off himself.”

He whistles. “You and your grenades.”

She ducks her head, clearly pleased by his praise. But the reminder—that she hates him, that he’s the enemy—hits her a second later and she shifts away from him in her seat. His hand feels empty without hers.

“And you haven’t seen him since?” he asks, still wondering about those weapons.

“No. If he survived it’s likely he thought all the chaos would finish me off. Or maybe he just knew I’d be useless on my own.”

“What? Hey, that is not true.” He grabs her by the shoulders and awkwardly twists them both so she can look at him. “You are _not_ useless. You survived Maveth. Hive.”

“No. _Will_ saved me. He had fourteen years of experience surviving Maveth and Hive and he _kept me alive_. And I got him killed.” Her gaze slips to the doors. “Just like I got her killed.”

“Bullshit. Hive killed Daniels. And those psychos poisoned Skye. That’s not on you.”

“Neither of them would’ve been- Wait. What? Skye?”

Grant shrugs. “She needed a name for the forms.”

He’d hoped she’d like the choice but her face falls. “Oh. I tried to find one. I searched all over that car. Even hacked her phone. No name anywhere.”

“No relatives?”

“Her husband died before she even had the baby.”

“Damn. Rough life.”

“Yes. It is.”

He can hear it in her voice she means about a million things right there. For Skye. For her mom. For herself and the team.

“I keep thinking,” she says to her empty hands in her lap, “that one day I’m gonna turn a corner and one of them will be there. That they’ll track me down and tell me they’ve been searching for me all this time. And the world will still be a mess but we’ll all be together so that’ll be all right, won’t it?”

He reaches out to lay a hand on her back. She lets out a dry sob and sways towards him. He shifts forward to catch her-

-and winds up on his feet, Simmons at his side, facing the doctor as he comes in.

/////

Skye recovers quite well. And the name sticks. Jemma truly should have settled on something sooner, if only for Skye’s sake, and Ward’s quick thinking has effectively made her decision for her, thus freeing her from the guilt of picking the wrong one.

After four days in the hospital, the doctors warn her that this episode might have set Skye back in the switch to solid foods, but her age is as much a benefit as it was an issue when she was first brought in. Her body’s entire job right now is to grow and develop and that can only help her healing. They recommend Jemma follow up with Skye’s pediatrician once they get home, which reminds Jemma she’ll be needing to get one of those. And a home as well.

“Do you really think you ought to be doing that?” she asks. She’s bouncing Skye on her hip, letting her enjoy the fresh air and sunshine while Ward transfers supplies from his vehicle to hers. In full view of the hospital and the street. Nothing but the long, not-at-all-deceptively-shaped bag to hide his rifles.

“If we take two cars that’s double the driving.”

“I mean moving those in plain sight. But come to think of it we should probably discuss the fact you’re coming with us.”

They haven’t up to now. Everyone they’ve met has naturally assumed they were a couple and it seemed the easiest thing to play into it.

And if doing so required Jemma to take comfort in Ward and his presence, well, that was only what was to be expected.

“Every cop in this town knows I burned that diner down and none of them give a-” He pauses with a glance at Skye. “None of them care.”

“They care enough to watch to make sure we _leave_.” She turns around and waves to Sheriff Jackson across the interstate. He waves right back and doesn’t take his eyes off them.

She suspects the real reason they’re being allowed to leave is that it’s just too much with the Event happening barely two weeks ago now. She read the coroner’s report (she needed something to do when she couldn’t sleep and breaking into the morgue seemed a good idea at two in the morning) and it confirmed the more than two dozen bodies found in a shed attached to the back of the diner died of aldrin poisoning. Likely Jackson simply doesn’t want to embroil his community in a scandal of that magnitude when they’re already in mourning.

Ward makes a dismissive noise through his teeth. No doubt small town sheriffs are far beneath the concern of a former head of Hydra.

“As for the other thing,” he says, “I thought you’d be happy to have me along. Someone else to do late night diaper changes. Someone to watch your back.”

“Someone to burn the people who wrong me alive.” The report said that too. The waitress and cook were alive but restrained when the fire reached them. She can’t find it in her to be angry at Ward for that, not when Skye’s wriggling in her arms to get a better view of a dragonfly zooming past.

Ward stills, his hand wrapped around the old broom that keeps the van’s back from swinging shut unexpectedly. “You want me to go?”

There’s a defensiveness in his voice she well remembers from their early days on the Bus. That could mean it’s just a put on. Or it could mean the brave face is the put on. Given his oft observed habit of latching onto anyone available and the obvious worry he’s had for Skye, she suspects he sincerely wants- No, _needs_ to come.

She should be frightened of that. But she’s got a baby in her arms at the end of the world. If she thought the Event would bring the world together, make it a little less dangerous, she’d be disappointed. As it is, she thinks she can use someone frightening in her corner.

Besides, she doesn’t want to go back to being alone either.

She steps back, out of range of the door’s swing and to the passenger side of the car. “No,” she says. “I don’t.”

He’s smiling when he joins her in the front. It strikes her with much the same warmth she used to feel when she caught one of his private smiles on the Bus. Almost like the last few days spent leaning on him have turned the years in between to dust as well.

“Any requests?” he asks as he pulls them out towards the exit.

She glances at Skye, already fighting sleep in her car seat. “Home. Wherever that is.”

Ward takes her hand for a brief squeeze. “We’ll find one.”

He pulls them out onto the road, only to immediately made a U-turn and pull them alongside the patrol car. Jackson’s gotten behind the wheel—likely to follow them out of his jurisdiction—and seems surprised to see them beside him.

“Hey.” Ward tosses the keys to his old car through the open windows and Jackson catches them before they can strike his face. “It’s stolen anyway.”

Before Jackson can respond, he speeds off, Jemma laughing beside him.

**Author's Note:**

>  **WARNING** for purposeful harm inflicted on an infant.


End file.
